


In A House Made of Sycamore

by Brighid



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Identity, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:19:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something of the host survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A House Made of Sycamore

**Author's Note:**

> This started out only the first bit, on it's own. The rest came a year later. It's a dark place in here, a bit.

In A House Made Of Sycamore

Hathor's First Prime watched, face impassive, as the first mature symbiote slid down the throat of the Beloved.

There would be no marks, no scars to mar pale flesh.

When the Beloved opened his eyes he said, "Our Mother, Our Queen!" and slid to the floor, naked, to kiss the curves of her thighs. When he rose and turned his white gaze flashed and flared as it came to rest on the First Prime, and his tongue touched his lips as though remembering a taste. He smiled, almost sweetly.

So, thought the First Prime. Something of the host does survive.

*0*

The first time was at the foot of her throne beneath her hooded gaze. She held her Beloved's face in her hands and ordered each movement, each thrust and pull. "He is my beard, he is my rod, my staff in war and in you, Beloved," she said. "Cry out for me." and the Beloved did, a torn noise that made the First Prime shudder hard against him, tremble on the edge of spilling but she had not given him leave. He bit his lip until he tasted blood and kept moving, surging deep. He knew his fingers would leave smudged bruises on the Beloved's pale hips. He wondered how long she would let him wear them before smoothing them away in the sarcophagus.

When she at last lifted her eyes and bid him come he fell over an edge into a brilliant white place where there was nothing, not even his God.

It was there, perhaps, that the first doubt was born.

*0*

The door to his quarters opened and the Beloved was there, smiling still. "You are shol'va in your heart, O'Neill," he said casually, tracing a gold-tipped finger along the shelf that held the First Prime's few possessions. His voice was the slow thunder of a coming storm.

"I think I was born that way," he replied. "Are you here to kill me? To take my head to that bitch?"

The Beloved laughed. "No. We came to discuss with you how best to take that bitch's head," he said. "We both have," said Daniel's voice.

"Don't play with me," Jack said. "You're not him. You'll never be him. Just fucking do what you're going to do."

The Goa'uld rose up in the blue gaze watching him so intently. "No, I am Ihy. He is Daniel. And we are very serious, O'Neill. The plan has not changed. We will take Hathor's Kingdom from her, return it to the Tau'ri, to the people of Chulak and the dozens of other worlds she's taken."

"And you expect me to believe you're doing this out of the good of your heart?" Jack snorted. "I'm not going to take her out just to make way for you."

Ihy moved closer, licked his lips like Daniel would do. "I do not want her kingdom."

"Then what?" and his breath was coming hard and fast as Ihy touched his face with gentle fingertips because his body felt only Daniel. "What the hell do you want?"

Ihy smiled, and it was not Daniel's smile. "You."

)8(

The third time was in the small gardener's cottage behind the roses. Hathor's First Prime remembered that his name was Jack, and learned how that name could be said so many different ways, always in one voice, a voice that lingered when he slept and whispered when he dreamed. He licked a wide wet trail down the Beloved's body, a glistening stripe, and swallowed him down, jaw and throat stretched wide, a mockery of the possession they both knew was waiting for the Beloved when the first symbiote matured.

He left no bruises on the fine, pale skin, but he marked the Beloved all the same, sighing against the sweated crease where thigh met body: "Daniel."

Daniel's breath hitched and stuttered and he said, "Sha'uri, oh god, Jack. Sha'uri." Broken glass sobs followed and Jack held Daniel in a room of shadows and stone.

)8(

Daniel and Ihy lived in uneasy alliance, a wire-fine balance between tension and trust. Jack hated it most when Daniel's open gaze would become shuttered and watching and full of a wanting that made Jack's gut churn sourly. Ihy, like Cassius before him, had a lean and hungry look.

One day, drowsing in Daniel's bed, Ihy said, "You think I am only what all other Goa'uld are, but I have known you, too. I have been inside your body and your dreams for ten years and that is ... no small thing. I am myself, as much as I am Goa'uld."

"You're a snake," Jack said, and rolled out of the bed. His walked, spine straight and steps measured, into the ensuite and vomited until it was nothing but spit and bile. Daniel was watching over his shoulder when he stood at last.

"I fucking hate him," Jack said to Daniel's reflection.

Daniel's reflection nodded, said, "I know."

And then:

"But some days, I think he hates himself more."

)8(

Hathor's eyes were deep and knowing as her hand reached into his pouch, caressed the symbiote he carried. "So, my rod, my staff ... this little one will soon be ready for the world. And what am I to do with you when it is gone? Are you still fit to serve me?" She pulled out sticky fingers, licked them thoughtfully. "There are others now, finer and stronger and more pleasing to the eye. Have you outlived your purpose?" She glanced over her shoulder, to the low stool where the Beloved sat in his pale robes. "What say you, my Beloved?"

He shrugged. "He is yours to do as you wish. You are God."

Hathor's eyes slitted when she smiled and she touched her wet hand to the First Prime's mouth and said, "I am. I am your God. Kneel before your God," and he did, he dropped to his knees and she touched the crown of his head. "Worship," she said, and Jack pressed his mouth to the curve where thigh met hip and the Beloved watched and did not weep.

)8(

Ihy's eyes were blue stones when his blade cut through Hathor's throat, from the invisible notch of cartilage where her voice lived, clear back through to the spine where the serpent coiled. Her eyes flared brilliant white and then faded, and the last rush of air was the mewling cry of the host.

He let her drop, and his hands were stained crimson and viscous blue.

"The time of gods is done," Ihy said quietly, and strode down from the dais onto the hard stone floor.

The jaffa stood in confusion, for their bodies were thick with the narcotic she'd fed them in food and water and air and yet when the First Prime called them to order, used names and ranks they'd more than half-forgotten they fell into formation and waited for their orders.

Days later later, debriefed and halfway detoxed a man with dark hair said, "Colonel?" but it was a question. "Only for a few more weeks, Major," Jack replied, his smile sharp and thin.

)8(

Hathor found them in the cottage, in the bed, and watched them as they slept, and it was her hands that woke them, her hands that slid between them. "This is a pretty thing," she said, "but it should have been an offering to me." She kissed each in turn, her bare hand fisting in Daniel's long hair, her mailed one sliding into Jack.

The symbiote inside twisted and turned.

"I think," she said, "It is time. And you, my First? I will give you another, because we both love you so well, we three love you so well."

She backed away, and gestured. "Again. Make it an offering to me, make it fine and sweet and know that it will be the last time." Her eyes glowed in the late afternoon shadow and Daniel kissed Jack and his mouth was salt-wet and his body shook and this was the last time, this was the last time so they tore into one another as though they could each take something away.

They did not care that Hathor watched.

)8(

Jack sat on the edge of Daniel's wide bed, and Ihy kissed him, a tentative brush of his lips against his shoulder. "Your White House is your own again, and your people. They'll learn to be free again."

"Except everyone I killed, " Jack said.

"Hathor killed them," Ihy replied. "You were merely her instrument." He stretched back on the bed, pulled Jack down against him. His heartbeat was subtly different, and the language his body spoke was one unknown to Daniel.

"Funny how I remember their faces, though, and how they all begged me, not the Bitch," Jack said, turning his face into Ihy's side, just above his hip, letting him stroke his head and neck.

"Do you blame Daniel for being her voice, for teaching her the ways to power here? Do you blame him for me being in his body?" Ihy asked, his tone measured, reasonable.

"Yes," Jack said.

"So does Daniel," Ihy sighed at last. "Promise us you will not take a gun to your head, O'Neill. Your world, the other worlds ... they are vulnerable to our Uncles and Aunts, and some of them ... some of them would make our Mother, Hathor, seem a blessing. She was a whorish old bitch, but she enjoyed life too much to be truly vicious. Her vice was the pleasures of your flesh, not the mortification of it."

He slid down, so that his forehead touched Jack's and he took Jack's face between his two bare hands and he kissed him sweetly. And then he fell back and started convulsing.

"Daniel!" And Jack was praying and swearing and turning Daniel onto his side and "You fucking snake! You fucking bastard _snake!"_ and Daniel's body bucked so hard Jack thought his spine would break. After a forever passed something dark and glistening slid out from Daniel's mouth, twisted on the dark blue cotton and scarlet silk of the bedclothes. It reared up and small eyes like jewels regarded Jack before it coiled up and lay itself down.

"Jack, labs," Daniel gasped, choking on blood and spit, "Get him in a tank ..." but Ihy was gone already and they both knew it. Daniel's body hitched with half-choked sobs and Jack rolled him over, kissed him and tasted the blood behind his teeth and

fuck

fuck

fucking snake.

All the dead around them everywhere, a decade's worth, and here he was, crying his guts out for a snake.

)8(

Brighid 2004 & 2005


End file.
